~ So many patterns, so much yarn, so little time: story of my hooky life.

Category Archives: Part 2

Yesterday, World Kidney Day, John and I visited the Royal Free Hospital and handed over the 14 blankets. As you can see from the photos we had a lovely chat with Thelma, the Ward Manager and other nurses. They loved the blankets! Thelma was very appreciative and promised to distribute the blankets to the dialysis patients who need it most.

She asked me to thank all you lovely people for making the hexagons and being part of Crochet For Kidneys Part 2.

I do hope that the recipients will find the time to join the Crochet For Kidneys Facebook group so that we can all “meet” each other!

With Crochet For Kidneys Part 1 and Part 2 now over, I know a lot of you are wondering when Part 3 will kick off. Crocheters love to crochet and we love to share our crochet so it’s only natural that you want to be part of more charity projects. I love that about you all! You’ll have to wait a couple of months for Part 3 though. Crochet For Kidneys Part 3 won’t kick off until September 2014, but dont let that stop you from crocheting for charity.

The Starting Chain blog made a list of ten US Charities that need crocheted items which you can read here and as a follow-up on that post, they listed nine charities in the UK, Canada and Australia that also need crocheted items here. If your hands are itching to put hook to yarn for a good cause, I’m sure you’ll be able to find the perfect charity project in amongst the 19 charities listed in these two articles.

One final thank you to everyone who contributed a hexagon. I, the nurses at Royal Free Hospital and of course the 14 dialysis patient really, really, really appreciate all you have done.

On Sunday evening I finished the last border, wove in the last tail end and snipped off the last stray bit of yarn on the last blanket for Crochet For Kidneys Part 2. They’re all done! “They” being a fantastic 14 beautiful blankets for dialysis patients. That’s double the number of blankets we had for Part 1!

In total I joined hexagons, and made borders, for eight blankets. Jenny (of Thames Ditton Crafters) and Jane (of Jane’s Nice and Easy Crochet) each joined a blanket too. Thank you very much for your help ladies! Five ladies made complete blankets for which I am so very grateful. One of those five will be sent directly to the Royal Free Hospital so I don’t have a photo to show you, but I do have photos of the 14 John and I will be handing over on the 13th of March.

We chose 13 March because it’s World Kidney Day – a global awareness and education event. What better day to hand over lovingly handmade blankets to those with kidney failure? These blankets are sure to bring them comfort in both senses of the word. I know you all put so much love into each stitch and the bright colours you chose will surely cheer up any poorly person. Thank you again each every one of you!

Here they are – the 14 blankets made by 36 crocheters, from 7 countries:

Hexagons made by everyone, joined by Natasja

Blanket made by Gill

Hexagons made by everyone, joined by Natasja

Hexagons made by everyone, joined by Natasja

Hexagons made by everyone, joined by Natasja

Hexagons made by Pauline and Anne, joined by Natasja

Hexagons made by everyone, joined by Jane

Hexagons made by everyone, joined by Natasja

Hexagons made by everyone, joined by Natasja

Blanket made by Mary

Hexagons made by everyone, joined by Natasja

Blanket made by San Bee

Hexagons made by everyone, joined by Jenny

Blanket made by Elizabeth (Liz)

Aren’t they beautiful? You have all done such an amazing job! Everyone’s hexagons have been used in these blankets. Whether you sent me two or 63, somewhere in these 14 blankets there will be a hexagon made by you. Thank you so much everyone!

I’d like to end this post with some kidney facts so that you can be aware and informed about the important role your kidneys play and what you can do to reduce the risk of kidney disease.

The main job of the kidneys is to remove toxins and excess water from our blood. Kidneys also help to control our blood pressure, to produce red blood cells and to keep our bones healthy.

Here are some ways to help reduce your risk of kidney disease:
• Keep the Pressure Down – High blood pressure accelerates kidney damage. To protect yourself from kidney disease you should monitor your blood pressure regularly and maintain a diet low in salt and saturated fats.
• Keep fit and active – This helps reduce your blood pressure and therefore reduces the risk of kidney disease.
• Don’t smoke – Cigarette smoking slows blood flow to the kidneys, decreasing their ability to function properly. Quit smoking to slow the progression of kidney disease.
• Eat healthily and keep your weight in check – This can help prevent diabetes, heart disease and other conditions associated with kidney disease.
• Know your kidney function – If anyone in your family has suffered from kidney disease, if you are diabetic or if you are of Asian or African ancestry, it is particularly important to get your kidney function checked by your GP. In the western world, 30-40% of patients with kidney failure have Type 2 diabetes.

Look after yourself and your kidneys my dear readers! I need you to be healthy so when Crochet For Kidneys Part 3 is launched in the Autumn, you can help me make more blankets. Deal? Deal.

Last week I thought I had done my last “your hexagons” post, but you guys surprised me once again. I received a further 42 hexagons! These parcels were probably sent to me a day or two before the 7th of February so they arrived after the deadline. Fear not, I will use these hexagons in a blanket. In fact, between the hexagons left over from last week and this batch, we have the makings of one more colourful blanket!

I know you’ve been wondering what our blankets look like. Wait no more! It was such a lovely sunny Winter’s day today I took the opportunity to string the six completed blankets against our back garden fence. I just couldn’t resist.

I will definitely post full size photos of each blanket when they’re all done, but for now here is a collage for you to enjoy.

The top left hand side pink and purple blanket is the work of San Bee of Loopsan blog. Her blanket arrived beautifully wrapped with crocheted hearts and crochet tie. Isn’t it sweet? I had to undo the ties to take the photo but will retie it exactly this way to present to the patient.

She even did a photo tutorial for making a hexagon – as if crocheting a whole blanket isn’t enough! Click here for her hexagon photo tutorial.

What do you think of our blankets? Do you think it will cheer up the recipients? You should see the colour combinations of the other blankets I still have to join up. They’re so, so, so pretty!

As I said last week, I don’t need any more hexagons. As it is, I’m crocheting away like a mad woman to get everything joined up before 28 February. Speaking of which, enough typing for now. I have blankets to make 🙂

Friday the 7th of February had finally arrived. It was the day of our hexagon hookup at the Court Farm Garden Centre cafe. I arrived just before 10 am to find our long table in front of the cozy fireplace. Isn’t this just the best place ever to get together with friends, old and new, for a spot of crochet?

Jude, Liz, Mary, Gill and Jenny arrived soon after me laden with bags of hexagons and even two completed blankets. Luckily the cafe wasn’t very full at this point because we did sort of take over a bit. Squeels of “Oooh Mary that’s gorgeous!” and “Bright solid colours! Just what I needed!” could be heard over in the conifer section.

The ladies really blew me away with their generosity. Like I said in yesterday’s post, I received enough hexagons for one blanket, as well as two completed blankets yesterday. Within two minutes, the blanket count rose with three. Totally unexpected and so welcome.

We didn’t waste much time in getting our drinks and eats. Everyone knows you crochet much better when you have coffee and a scone.

We decided that the six of us would spend our two hours joining the straight sides of six hexagons, to make the rows that I would eventually join up. I made little packets of rows for each of the two blankets I took with me. If they helped me make up the ten rows of six, all I have to do is join the 10 rows together in zig zags and do the borders for all the blankets. Easy peasy.

Here’s Mary sewing up a straight side.

Jude and Liz doing their straight sides. I had such a great time with these ladies. I think it was at this point I did a little hoppity-dancemove as I returned to the table. I was in my element. I mean really: day off work, morning in a cafe, crochet, friends, coffee, scones, hexagons for charity, chit-chat about all things crochet and yarn related. How could I not be happy?

So much concentration! Gill is sewing up the hexagons that she made. It looks like she will have made enough for one complete blanket!

Jenny’s little helper Nat was very well behaved and friendly. He’s the cutest little guy.

Can you see how pretty Gill’s hexagons are? I can’t wait to see the completed blanket. Jenny kept her head down the whole time, working away non-stop.

Here is Mary’s blanket.

Mary is very proud of her blanket. And so she should be! I can’t explain to you how well made this is. The sides are super straight, the corners extra pointy, the tension amazingly consistent throughout and the 5cm wide (US) sc / (UK) dc border done in exactly the right combination of colours.

I will take more photos of Mary’s blanket, as well as Liz’s purple and white hexagon blanket that I told you about yesterday, for a later post. You will definitely see more of this blanket!

Next time I’m doing a blanket I’m going to make a Mary Border. It’s so simple but so effective. The odds that your blanket will be made up of (US) sc / (UK) dc stitches are very slim, so using that stitch for the border is the perfect contrast and it forms a lovely stiff edge which keeps everything nicely together. A Mary Border. That’s a thing right? It wasn’t, but now it is.

At the end of the two hours the six of us had joined all the straight sides of both blankets. Two hours extremely well spent and a great help to me.

To Liz, Mary, Jenny, Gill and Jude I want to say a huge thank you for taking the time to help join the hexagons. I had an amazing time and you’ve been a great help to me. If I could, I would do it all again next week. Hey, I’d do it again tomorrow if if I could!

Crochet For Kidneys Part II is almost at an end. This is the last week and boy you guys know how to rally at the end! Last week I received 229 and this week I received 209! The 209 include 61 hexagons given to me at today’s hookup at Court Farm Garden Centre cafe. It’s crazy! Like John says: “Crocheters are so cool”.

I am going to do a separate blog post about today’s hookup. It was such a great morning it surely deserves its own blog post, so here are the 209 hexagons I received this week:

Yes you read right. Liz gave me the hexagons you see above, as well as a whole blanket! She made it in purple and white hexagons, the perfect mix of Crochet For Kidneys Part I and Part II. I will show you her blanket when I post photos of all our blankets a bit later in February.

As you can see I had to put some hexagons to use before I could take the photos because they fitted in so perfectly with the blankets I was putting together. My method of making these charity hexagon blankets is to group colours together so that the blankets are not a total mishmash of crazy colours (I love me my crazy colour combos but it might be a bit much for a dialysis patient. Hey, it might be a bit much for most people).

As I open the parcels of hexies I could see the colour themes developing. For instance I put together a teal, yellow, orange & purple blanket. I also have a blanket in dark tones and one in autumnal colours. There’s a pastels blanket and a pink & orange one too. But the strange and totally amazing thing is that whenever I was short a few hexagons in a certain colour group, the Gods Of Crochet would send me exactly what I needed to complete the blanket!

Then there’s the red and green blanket… Up to today I received almost no hexagons that were worked with red yarn. That all changes with Pauline and Ann’s parcels. Not only did I all of a sudden have red hexagons, they both combined the red with green and the two of them had made enough between them for a full blanket. It’s as if Pauline and Ann worked together to make a blanket! I just love it!!

I packed out a design for the red & green blanket on our living room carpet and it worked! (None of the other blankets follow a specific pattern, they’re arranged randomly.) When I started arranging the hexagons (the green at the top left corner was the first one) I didn’t know whether I had enough or whether I would be able to keep up the pattern. It was one of those “close your eyes and hope for the best” moments. As I reached the second to last row I held my breath and when I got to the green hexagon in front of my feet (yes, I’m wearing red tipped socks too. Crazy!) I could finally exhale. I also did a little happy dance. Of course.

At last count it looks like we will have 11 blankets to give to the Royal London Hospital. Eleven! That’s so much more than I could have hoped for. Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed.

For the moment I don’t need any more hexagons. (If you have made hexagons but not posted them yet, then of course please still send them to me.)

John and I are planning to deliver the blankets to the dialysis unit on the 28th of February. That gives me three weeks to join up all the hexagons and for anyone out there who has been working on a whole blanket, to post the blanket to me – that’s you amazing ladies Gill, Jane, Tammy and San.

Thank you again for each and every hexagon that I received from all over the world. You really are the best an I can’t thank you enough!

This week has been the best week yet for Crochet For Kidneys Part II. I received 10 parcels from 8 crocheters containing 229 hexagons! The 229 hexagons are enough for 3.8 blankets and brings the total hexagon count to a whopping 459 – enough for 7 and a half blankets! I know there are more hexagons on the way, so we should have at least eight blankets for dialysis patients at the Royal London Hospital!

I am so happy and so humbled by the charitable spirit of my blog readers. The cards and hand written notes with words of encouragement you include, also mean the world to me.

Here are the 229 hexagons I received:

If your are a member of the Crochet For Kidneys group you would have seen what happened to Sonja’s beautiful box of hexagons – I forgot them on the train!! I know right?! The box was delivered to my work address on Thursday, so I had to take it home with me. I got on the train at Waterloo and put it on the storage rack above my head. Only when I got home and wanted to show John the box with the beautiful flower stamps from Germany did I remember about the box. I kid you not, my heart stopped beating for a few seconds. I felt so incredibly stupid and very, very bad. All the hours of work, the yarn, the time spent making the hexagons and time and money spent on putting it in the post – and I forgot it on the train!

Thankfully someone saw the package and handed it in at the Lost Property office. I collected it from there on Friday evening. Hooray for honest people!!!! I had to sign a sheet at the Lost Property office when I picked up, and paid £2, for my box of hexagons. The list showed what others had collected that day. I counted four iPads, two Tablets, reading glasses and right at the top of the list was a wallet! There were other things too, but this is all that I could make out in the short time it took Wilson to write down my details. Isn’t it wonderful to know that there are still honest and kind people out there?

Not that I need any more proof – I mean, I received 229 hexagons for charity blankets in just week. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

In one week I received, wait for it, 87 hexagons from four lovely crocheters for Crochet For Kidneys Part II!! Whoo-hooo!!! 87 in one week!!! The total is now 193.

The fantastic Cathy sent me 40 hexagons from New Hampshire, USA. It arrived in a shoebox filled to the brim with brightly coloured hexagons. Love it!

Between Ellen, from Belgium, and Karen from South Africa I received 17 hexagons. They both used the African Flower Hexagon pattern. It’s just sooo pretty isn’t it? I love that these two ladies used the same pattern and achieved the same result: a strikingly beautiful hexagon, yet they live in opposite sides of the world – proof that good design is good no matter where you live or what language you speak.

Pauline sent me her hexagons, packaged in clear bags sorted by colour no less, via the Document Exchange service for law firms. When she asked for my address and saw that I too work for a law firm, we decided to make use of DX. I don’t think crocheted hexagons have ever been sent using DX. Another first for Crochet For Kidneys 🙂

All of these ladies’ hexagons have already been incorporated in the first blanket. Yup, I’ve started to join up the hexagons. Like John said: we want to give the people their blankets while it’s still Winter so I thought I’d get going. I posted a few photos on the Facebook Group of me joining the hexagons. Go have a look here. I also posted that I realised we need 60 hexagons per blanket in order to get it to a decent size similar to the size of the purple and white square blankets.

If we need 60 hexagons per blanket, that means we now have enough for 3 blankets. Hopefully I’ll receive a few more so that we can make 5 blankets. I think 5 is a good number. Obviously more would be better, but at least 5 will make me happy.

I’m off to join some hexagons. Keep them coming ladies! Our blankets are going to be beautiful!

You are hereby invited to join me on Friday 7 February 2014 for two hours of hexagon joining!

Our day of joining the hexagons is getting closer! We are going to invade the Court Farm Garden Centre cafe for two hours of crocheting. The garden centre’s “official” address is Worcester Park but the closest train station is Tolworth. Have a look at their website here: http://www.courtfarm.uk.com/Home/CoffeeShop.

The cafe manager said that it would be fine for us to sit there for 2 hours as long as we eat and drink something. They have a great menu at very reasonable prices and do fantastic coffee so I’m sure finding something to eat and drink won’t be a problem. We could even do brunch!

Please RSVP before 1 February so that I can book a table. In case you’re wondering about the joining of the hexagons, Jane Czaja will be there to show us how to do it

I really hope you can make it!!

If you have been making hexagons for Crochet For Kidneys Part II, but can’t join us on the 7th of February, you can share your photos on the newly created Facebook Group!!!!!!!!!! Just click here to find the group or search for “Crochet For Kidneys”. I only had the brainwave to create a Group a few minutes ago so it’s still very new and only consists of three members…. I will add photos of the blankets from Crochet For Kidneys Part I and photos of the beautiful hexagons received so far, this evening.
Please use the group to share your hexagons and blankets with the rest of us. I will also use it to pass on information.

By the way, I received four parcels of hexagons today (Yeah!!!) and I started joining up hexagons on the train to work this morning. The blankets are literally taking shape

I received a further 32 hexagons for Crochet For Kidneys Part II!! That makes the total so far 106, which is enough for two very colourful blankets!

Emma Ashman and her mom sent me 17 colourful hexagons from Suffolk. Their Dad & Husband had suffered from kidney failure for years and passed away in November last year. It’s cases like these, and the good hearts of people like Emma and her Mom that motivate me to keep going with Crochet For Kidneys. Thank you ladies for thinking of others when you could so easily have said you are done with all things “kidney failure” – which would have been understandable after what you have been through. Your participation truly means a lot to me.

Looking at the hexagons already received, I can tell that our blankets are going to be sooooo beautiful! Keep them coming!!!

I’m sure you will understand why I gave Jude’s hexagons an extra two photos. They are so crazy colourful!!!

It astounds me every time I receive a parcel filled with hexagons, that people are so nice. Nice enough that you give up your yarn, your time and pay for postage to make hexagons for strangers. None of you have to do this, but you do. And you don’t skimp on creativity, quality or neatness – I can see the care and love that have gone into your hexagons. It makes me very proud to be a crocheter.

I can’t wait to see what the rest of you have been making! Keep them coming!!!!